By Daniel McCabe. Today’s research environment pushes for the quick fix, but successful science needs time to think. There is a growing school of thought emerging out of Europe that urges university-based scientists to take careful stock of their lives – and to try to slow things down in their work.
According to the proponents of the budding “slow science” movement, the increasingly frenetic pace of academic life is threatening the quality of the science that researchers produce. As harried scientists struggle to churn out enough papers to impress funding agencies, and as they spend more and more of their time filling out forms and chasing after increasingly elusive grant money, they aren’t spending nearly enough time mulling over the big scientific questions that remain to be solved in their fields. This slow science movement is patterned, to some extent, on the Slow Food movement, born in Italy in the 1980s. Read more...

By Maureen Mancuso. We need to measure what students learn. In my introductory column, I hinted at the ever-brewing, sometimes boiling conflict between unconstrained academic freedom and the increasing demands for accountability and proof of “return on investment” in higher education. In some ways we are victims of our own success: as academics we know that education is as much about the journey as the destination, but there’s no escaping the fact that many of the people involved value that destination pretty highly. Education is an excellent investment – for students, communities and governments – but as with any program that pays off in social and intellectual as well as mere monetary capital, it can be challenging to demonstrate that fact convincingly.
What annoys many academics, including me, about the baldly economic description of education as an “investment” is that modelling teachers as producers and students as consumers not only demeans both parties to the relationship but also reduces learning to a purely passive activity: mere absorption of knowledge, pre-digested and individually wrapped. The problem is that budgets are budgets, and if all we can provide are fiscal metrics, there will always be a tendency to use a model that conforms to what can be measured. Read more...

By Jordan Paper. Research vs. teaching institutions? Here’s a better idea. The debate over the relationship between research and teaching in the contemporary university exists within the larger framework of late 20th-century understandings. These understanding include the belief that everyone should have a “higher” education, rendering the concept meaningless; and that funding is based on the number of students, leading legislators to measure productivity quantitatively and universities to try to expand enrolment and avoid failing students. The 20th-century understandings also permit the encroachment of pedagogy into higher education, which unnaturally shifts the burden of learning from the student to the teacher and places priority on self-esteem over learning. Thus, the debate over research and teaching reflects the loss of meaning of “the university,” now far removed from its original concept.
Once upon a time, the university was a place where professors professed (“declared publicly”); they professed original understandings of ideas fundamental to the societies of their times; they professed through lectures because printing was late in developing in Europe – the lectures were in lieu of books which students could not afford. Now, it has been suggested that professors no longer profess what they have learned to be passed on to the next generation. Instead, they are to digest and regurgitate what others have learned and published, and pass that along through now counter-productive lectures. Those who advance knowledge and understanding are expected not to profess those understandings but rather to leave it to others to relate their findings to students. Read more...

By Rosanna Tamburri. Whether you see them as a catalyst for change or mostly as hype, MOOCs are fundamentally different from other forays into open online learning.
A poetry appreciation class for 30,000 – what’s that like? Hear the author talk about her experiences as a MOOC student in the latest Reporter's Notebook podcast.
It’s been 25 years since I last set foot in a university classroom and, to be honest, the thought of doing so now makes me a little uneasy. Not that I’ll be in a classroom per se this time round. The 10-week course on modern and contemporary American poetry that I’ve enrolled in through Coursera is taught solely online.
An introductory email from the instructor, University of Pennsylvania English professor Al Filreis, assured me that I didn’t need to know a thing about poetry to succeed in the class. But he too admitted to some trepidation. It would be a challenge, he wrote, to judge how well everyone is doing – all 30,000 of us. We would use online chat groups to discuss the poems and peer-to-peer grading to assess one another’s writing assignments. There would be weekly quizzes and four short essays and if I complete them all, I’ll get a certificate.
Week one gets under way with a look at the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. After reading Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility –” I watch a 20-minute video of the engaging Dr. Filreis and his TAs parsing its meaning. We are invited to do the same on one of the several chat groups that have sprung up on the site. At the end of the week I attempt my first quiz, two short multiple-choice questions. I score 100 percent on the first question and 80 on the second. All in all, not too bad a beginning. Read more...

By Roslyn Dakin. Could an economic perspective on grades help improve university teaching?
Late can be costly in childcare. When parents arrive late to pick up their children, caregivers are forced to work extra hours – often with no compensation. One solution is to charge late parents a small fine to deter this behaviour. But when economists Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini did just that – introducing a $3 late fee at a group of daycare centres in Haifa, Israel – it had the opposite effect: the late arrivals more than doubled.
In recent years, behavioural economists like Drs. Gneezy and Rustichini have begun to study how people respond to incentives using controlled experiments. Their work reveals a host of psychological effects: we’re risk averse, prone to choking when the stakes are high, and we over-value the present. Different types of incentives – financial, social or moral – can have different effects. As a result, policies often backfire.
In the daycare study, the late penalty failed because it took an important social cost – the desire not to impose on others – and replaced it with a financial cost that parents found quite affordable. Instructors often use a similar policy with grades, deducting five or ten percent of the mark from late assignments. Could this have the perverse effect of encouraging procrastination?
The comparison between grades and financial incentives is not far-fetched. After all, students work for grades, and they trade them for scholarships and a spot in graduate school. Grading practices affect which courses students take and how much they enjoy them. So, do students treat grades like money? Read more...

The 1st AOU International Conference on Open Learning - Role, Challenges and Aspirations. 25-27th November 2013, Kuwait
The Arab Open University (AOU) in Kuwait is organizing its first International Conference on Open Learning: 'Role, Challenges and Aspirations' and this in collaboration with the Regional Center for Development of Educational Software (ReDSOFT), a leading center in the Arab region that focuses on the development and use of educational software, using multimedia on the internet. The conference will be an opportunity to discuss the new trends in open learning and technology and to recommend solutions to the challenges of open learning and will be of interest to academics, psychologists, researchers, practitioners and decision makers from different countries and institutions.
First Call
In collaboration with the Regional Center for Development of Educational Software (ReDSOFT), the Arab Open University (AOU) headquarter in Kuwait is organizing its first International Conference on Open Learning: Role, Challenges and Aspirations on 25-27 November, 2013 in Kuwait.
This international Conference on open and blended learning will bring together a range of academics, psychologists, researchers, practitioners and decision makers from different countries and institutions.
The conference will be an excellent opportunity to discuss the new trends in open learning and technology and to recommend solutions to the challenges of open learning. The papers will be presented in Arabic and in English (instant translation will be available).
•    The Main Objectives of the Conference:
1-    Increasing awareness about the importance of open learning and its role in development in the world and specifically in the Arab region.
2-    Spreading awareness about quality standards and quality assurance in open learning.
3-    Suggesting solutions to the different challenges (technological, psycho-Social and bureaucratic) in open learning.
•    The Main Themes of the Conference:
1-    Quality assurance in open learning.
2-    Techniques and methods of open learning and the required learning resources.
3-    Success stories in open learning.
4-    Academic accreditation for open learning degrees and institutions.
5-    International trends and experience in open learning.
6-    The role of open learning in development.
•    Workshops
-    Introduction to open and distance learning.
-    Managing the implementation of open and distance learning.
-    Technology in open and distance learning
- For any inquiry, please contact: Miss. Hadeer Ahmad: h.ahmed@arabou.edu.kw. Or: Miss. Yasmin Mahmoud: y.mahmoud@arabou.edu.kw.

16th ERSCP-EMSU Conference: Bridges for a More Sustainable Future – Uniting Continents and Societies. June 4-7, 2013, İstanbul Boğaziçi University.
INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCES: 16th Conference of the European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP) & 7th Conference of the Environmental Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU)
BRIDGES FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE UNITING CONTINENTS AND SOCIETIES
ERSCP-EMSU İstanbul Boğaziçi University 2013 cordially invites scholars, graduate students, academicians, researchers, professionals, public employees to present their research studies and success stories.
The conferences are offering unique collaboration and exchange of experience opportunities and will be one of the largest gatherings of EMSU and ERSCP groups, providing a broader vision for interdisciplinary research and extended partnership.
Select experts in the fields of ERSCP and EMSU make up the core group of the International Joint Conferences. ERSCP-EMSU joint conferences will focus on the integration of many research efforts in addressing the challenge of sustainable development applications in higher education institutions and also in production and consumption patterns.
The joint conferences will offer a novel bridging approach for a more sustainable future by uniting continents and societies, discussing how to attain the development of sustainable regions within and between different continents and societies. The success of bridging will be highlighted through international collaborations that will enforce synergetic benefits of both ecological and human health together with material welfare.
The presentations are expected to attract representatives of researchers and academicians from many disciplines, policy makers, production and service sector representatives, NGOs, agencies, media who will be the main actors for bridging action plans for a sustainable future.
As ‘Sustainable Life Styles’ is one of the main topics of İstanbul ERSCP-EMSU Joint Conferences, contribution of university graduates who have already succeeded sustainability concern for more sustainable business outcomes will be encouraged within the frame of bridging EMSU in the context of ERSCP.
On the top of that, universities require huge amounts of resources leading to large quantities of waste and emissions, foils in sustainable development.  Universities either campus or city based are one of the important sources of pollution for soil, water and air compartments. The sustainable university life plans will be explored with a thorough understanding of international standardization concept in human health, waste minimization and resource conservation issues. This very successful part of the İstanbul EMSU Conference will create the discussion forum for the continuation of improvements in environmental management systems for more sustainable universities. The international examples of sustainability assessment methodologies/tools applied for evaluation of sustainable green university campus studies will reflect new competencies in this field. This will definitely draw attention of the contributors to the role of universities for promotion of sustainability.
ERSCP İstanbul will cover broad range of core topics on sustainable production and consumption applications including the role of relevant stakeholders and tools.
ERSCP İstanbul aims to build on the success from the previous ERSCP conferences by identifying many areas that warrant further investigation. Following the outcomes of previous ERSCP conferences, ERSCP İstanbul will definitely provide another comprehensive update forum for the exchange of ideas on the latest developments sustainable technology development/modification issues for success case studies.
The changes in the countries’ development, their performance towards environmental targets and the level of their best practices that are required to sustain their population and economic growth will affect the development of their sustainability infrastructure. Within this framework, the impacts of the recent changes in economic and political situations of the countries will be assessed by referring their ecological footprint as the baseline especially for production industries. As an industrial product can be evaluated through eco-design concerns; main drivers, barriers advantages for application of eco-design concept need to be reassessed for the common economic and political problems. The recent changes in industrial eco-design topic will be enlightened by making a thorough analysis of technological innovations / improvements / modifications, socio-economic factors, life cycle assessment applications and dissemination opportunities. The role of consumer behavior, governmental support, economic incentives need to be successfully integrated for defining sustainable consumption and production patterns in long run.
In addition to these, concerning the outcomes of various protocols, conventions and declarations globally based sustainability thresholds and forecasts for ecological degradation and human well-being, governance, energy sources will be discussed through the relevant sessions.     
Moreover, the evaluation of sustainability indicators for regional area development will be handled. The examples need to cover mega cities and rural areas. This will take a leading position in future concerns of wide applications for sustainable production and consumption taking into account cultural and historical impacts. Certain action plans with decision making mechanisms are necessary for the preservation of rural areas especially sensitive areas. The important sectors for rural area need to be improved by focusing on not only their typical market share but also with the environmental costs.  Sustainable rural area development concerns social well-being, renewable energy and resource potentials, and agricultural activities as the basic challenging aspects for encouraging local people to reduce their impact in their regions. The joint conferences will cover the integration of environmentally technical, socio-political models that covers economic values as well.
Assoc. Prof. Nilgün Cılız, Boğaziçi University, Conference Chair.

Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) 2013 Conference, Jun 3 - Jun 5, 2013. University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Rd, Victoria, Canada. 2013_CSSHE_Call_English. 2013_CSSHE_Call_French.
The Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) will hold its annual conference June 3-5, 2013 within the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, hosted by the University of Victoria in Victoria, Beautiful British Columbia.
This conference is being planned in close collaboration with the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) and the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) so that individuals attending one of these three conferences will also have the opportunity to attend sessions at one or both of the other gatherings. A pre-conference, co-hosted with CASAE, will be held on Saturday, June 1. Information will follow.
This year’s theme
The Congress 2013 theme is “@the Edge.” CSSHE invites submissions that explore the overall theme or aspects of it as applied to the field of higher education. Papers addressing specific-but-related topics such as online learning, governance, research, informal and experiential learning, recruitment and student services will also be considered for inclusion in the program.
Who should attend?
CSSHE invites submissions from researchers in higher education and related disciplines such as political science, sociology, history, philosophy, psychology, women’s studies, economics, business, administration, and the professions. This conference offers an opportunity for graduate students, educators, policy makers, administrators, activists, and advocates to contribute, reflect, and share their perspectives on higher education and issues around student success. Graduate students, college and university faculty and administrators are encouraged to submit proposals for the 2013 conference. This year’s conference will include keynote presentations, organized paper presentations, individual paper presentations, and a poster session.
2013_CSSHE_Call_English. 2013_CSSHE_Call_French.